Quinterox

Love/ Hate Relationship

A couple of weeks ago Google launched one of its greatest products thus far: Google Buzz. People like myself praised Google for the introduction of this social medium while others criticized it. Those who criticized it had a very good reason to: the Gmail user’s contacts email addresses were being published on their Google public profiles. This was probably due to the fact that Google developers had tested Buzz between themselves during its development in a corporate environment and thus saw no need for privacy. Though kind of understandable it still does not let Google off the hook in my and many other people’s eyes. Privacy is something all of us hold dear, and though it is hard to be private on the internet we certainly want to separate what our friends can see versus what our co-workers, bosses and stalkers can see. This separation was not considered upon Google’s implementation of Buzz. The lack of privacy controls made a lot of people unhappy and brought Google a few steps back in gaining the user’s trust.

About two days later Google made some changes to the Buzz application allowing user to have more control over their privacy. This quick response shows, or at least is interpreted by myself that Google cares about its users and I applaud that.

Looking Forward>>>

So after Google tweaks, buffs, and polishes Buzz what will we have? What do you think? Will it fail? Will it replace Facebook, Twitter and friends? Or will it enable communication between all these websites?

I go for the last one! I think this will push social websites to develop ways to “speak” between each other and will in the end prove to be a breakthrough. Google, you win! Please just try not to compromise your user’s privacy anymore or your users won’t trust you. Like Wallstreet you are also not too big to fail. : )